Water Polo Takes Down Loomis

After a rough start to the game, girls’ water polo pulled out a 9-2 win over Loomis Chaffee School, with every player on the team working together to defeat their opponents. The girls had to adjust to a non-regulation pool that was slightly longer than the Roger A. Nekton Championship Pool with a shallow end and a larger goal. Despite these challenges, they won their second game in a row and continue to improve every day."The game went pretty well overall," senior co-captain Mariah Mastrodimos said. "We were a bit slow to start, but we really picked it up in the second half and scored a couple goals. Some of our new players got in during the last quarter, and they did a fantastic job. As a team, we have come a long way since the start of the season, and I am proud of the progress that everyone has made."The team’s slow start can likely be attributed to the players’ need to adjust to Loomis’s pool. "We had some trouble with movement in the pool and creating scoring opportunities, but I think it was alright for having to play in a non-regulation pool," senior Kelly Wolff said.Loomis could also have caught Big Red off-guard in the beginning, pegging the girls back early in a game that they may have anticipated winning comfortably. "I think we went into the game thinking that we were going to win easily, but Loomis has gotten better over the course of the season, so they gave us a little challenge at the beginning," senior Olivia Jackson said.Every player on the team was able to participate in the game, a highlight for many of the athletes."A few of the preps got to play, and they looked really good," Wolff said. "I’m sure they were nervous but they handled the pressure really well.""We’ve been developing well," Wolff continued. "We’ve focused a lot on getting the basics down, and that has helped the new players build a foundation for the future, and it’s helped returners to go over things that may have been forgotten. We’re going to be focusing a lot on offensive movement going in to the next few games to make sure we can create scoring opportunities."The girls’ water polo team has many important games coming up, and the team is doing whatever they can to prepare."The team is getting progressively better, but we still have a lot to work on and a lot of things we can do better," Jackson said. "Deerfield this weekend is going to be really tough and a big challenge.""The rest of the season is making everyone on the team a little nervous," Wolff said. "We have to beat either Deerfield, Choate or Andover to make it to the Liquid Four tournament. We'll be playing all of these teams at home, in our all-deep pool, which puts us at a slight advantage, but it’ll be close. We’ve been working hard and doing a lot of conditioning, so I feel like these games are challenges that we can definitely beat."